Due to the astounding success of the first challenge, a new one was envisioned for the New Year since the accede the first. What you are viewing is it here.
The challenge will run for 2 weeks, from 5 January 2009 20:00 to the 19th January 2009 20:00 New Zealand Daylight Time (UTC+1300).

I would also like to proudly announce that Uli is working with me to provide the daily statistics and helping me with the logistics of this thread in general. Give her the full credit for the statistics that will be provided.

A link to FreeRice is here. The above and below images are also linked directly to FreeRice, clicking on the images or the link preceding will take you directly to FreeRice.

I would to myself pledge a guaranteed 50,000 grains, with an extra 25,000 if we reach the milestone of 2,000,000. Plus 10,000 for every 100,000 after that. To start off, I have already donated 5,000 grains. I hope to see you here and donating! (Remember if you have donated, please, please tell us how much you donated by posting in this thread! I do not accept PM's on the basis of false statistics and accusations of cheating.)

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I would like to leave you tonight with this old legend:

...When the creator of the game chess showed his invention to the ruler of the country, the ruler was so pleased that he gave the inventor the right to name his prize for the invention. The man, who was very wise, asked the king this: that for the first square of the chess board, he would receive one grain of rice, two for the second one, four on the third one and so forth, doubling the amount each time. The ruler, who was not strong in math, quickly accepted the inventor's offer, even getting offended by his perceived notion that the inventor was asking for such a low price, and ordered the treasurer to count and hand over the wheat to the inventor. However, when the treasurer took more than a week to calculate the amount of wheat, the ruler asked him for a reason for his tardiness. The treasurer then gave him the result of the calculation, and explained that it would be impossible to give the inventor the reward. The ruler then, to get back at the inventor who tried to outsmart him, told the inventor that in order for him to receive his reward, he was to count every single grain that was given to him, in order to make sure that the ruler was not stealing from him...

Sum up:

Note the fact that the first "half" of the chessboard contains 4,294,967,295 grains of rice, while the 64th square contains an astounding 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 grains of rice, or more than a billion times as much on the entire first half of the chessboard. In total, on the entire chessboard there would be exactly 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 grains of rice.

I hope to see every single person that views this thread donate. Please... remember the fact that the total amount of money needed to stop world poverty is estimated at US$200,000,000,000 a year. Donating rice is free...